Regulatory Barriers Clearinghouse
Strategy-of-the-Month Club
August 2007
Local governments play a significant
role in the
development of affordable housing through
their zoning
policies, which help shape the landscape
of their
communities. However, local governments
with "policing
power" - the power to adopt land
use policies that protect
the public's heath, safety, and welfare
- often institute
policies that, unintentionally or otherwise,
exclude
affordable housing. As a result, some
states, such as
California, have mandated that local
governments adopt a
plan to address the development of
affordable housing.
Starting in 1980, the California Housing
Element law
has required each city and county to
revise and update a
detailed housing element as part of
its general plan.
The housing element requires that local
governments
assess their housing needs by conducting
site-specific
inventories to ensure that a sufficient
number of sites
are zoned to allow for appropriate
densities with
adequate public infrastructure. Each
jurisdiction must
meet its "fair share" of
the region's affordable housing
needs by addressing accessibility of
affordable housing
to public transportation, the number
of farm worker
housing units that are needed, and
the maximum number of
units allowed to be rehabilitated or
conserved. In
addition, each locality's housing plan
must include a
program to remove local government
constraints to
affordable housing development.
California law explicitly calls for
public involvement
in the development or revision of housing
elements;
however, the complexity of the laws
can make it
difficult for the public to understand
the process. For
this reason, the California Affordable
Housing Law
Project of the Public Interest Law
Project released the
second edition of the California Housing
Element Manual
in February of this year. The manual
provides affordable
housing advocates with the tools they
need to analyze,
advocate, and navigate their way through
the housing
law. The manual includes:
o An overview and revisions of the
law;
o Process and timelines;
o Advocacy and citizen participation;
o Text of all housing element statutes;
o A question and answer section; and
o A review worksheet to analyze the
element.
To view the manual in its entirety,
please
visit https://www.huduser.gov/rbc/search/rbcdetails.asp?DocId=1584.
We hope this information proves useful
to you in your
efforts to grow your region's affordable
housing stock.
If you have regulatory reform strategies
or resources
that you'd like to share, send us an
email
at rbcsubmit@huduser.gov,
call us at 1-800-245-2691 (option
4), or visit our website at www.regbarriers.org.
Feel free to forward this message to
anyone who is
working to reduce regulatory barriers
to affordable
housing.
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